For anyone following the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the vuvuzela is an impossible-to-ignore aspect of the tournament’s location. A traditional South African musical instrument, soccer fans have turned the now-plastic noise makers into the Jar-Jar Binks of the sporting world – loved by few, hated by most, ridiculed by all. The buzzing noise has gotten so bad that FIFA briefly considered a ban in response to players, commentators and broadcasters complaining about it’s impact on the game. Now, if they’d just stayed in the soccer stadiums where they belong, I’d have nothing to blog about. But the vuvuzela has become an internet sensation as well; that’s right: its trademark buzz has gone viral.
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This is not the University of Arizona Mascot. It's just a Devil. And the Facebook logo. Make of it what you will...
Facebook is trying to take over the world/the internet/your life! Or at least, that’s the impression someone might get by perusing blogs, news aggregators and general web industry water cooler discussions. With the implementation of their “Instant Personalization” feature, Facebook basically drew back the curtain on the amount of personal data they’re willing to share with other sites. Couple this with the brouhaha over their almost constant mis-steps and backtracking with regards to their privacy policies and it’s almost like Facebook can do no right.
Facebook has over 400 million active users. People are tweeting an average of 600 times a second. For those of us who are still wondering who the heck are using these services, the answer seems obvious: everyone…and their mother. These enormous user bases are mighty attractive to any marketing team out there, regardless of industry, and the race is on to translate these huge numbers into something more valuable that a database of a billion daily blurbs about what folks are having for breakfast.
Now, it may just be because I’m an English major and thus love the evolution of the English language, but to me one of the more interesting results of this attempt to leverage the social media masses is the appearance of the social media lexicon in mainstream advertisements. The earliest example I can think of regarding this meeting of words involves the 2007 AT&T ad for text plans:
Facebook‘s changed a lot from the online university student community it was in 2004. It used to be that you joined, selected what classes you were taking–or a bunch of silly, fake classes as was the case for some of us–and then found other people in your classes to ask for homework assignments. Clearly, it’s transitioned into a social application for everyone. I still remember the outcry when it was announced that Facebook would open itself up to people not currently enrolled in university, “oh my gosh, everyone will be able to see me and stalk me now… even, gasp, non-college-students!” The same outcry that’s gone up every time something has radically changed at Facebook. I’ve been waiting all this time, as someone who’s been active in “online communities” of sorts since online communities consisted of dialing your 2400 baud modem into a Bulletin Board System and leaving a note for whomever dialed in next, to watch Facebook (and others) initiate people into a realm that used to be for enthusiasts only. It’s funny to hear people call fads, like “25 random things about me” or “use song titles to describe yourself,” Facebook fads, when I remember taking part in those via email chain letters in 1995, and then again in blog posts in a sort of redux at the height of blogging-as-personal-journal in 2002. Continue Reading →